FanPost

The Cardinals Backlash is Inevitable. However...

When I started paying attention to baseball beyond simply viewing games as a matchup of the St. Louis Cardinals and a random opponent, the dominant teams were the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees. The Yankees, starting with perhaps the best team in the modern era of baseball, won three consecutive World Series titles and could have easily won a fourth had the best relief pitcher in the history of baseball not commenced with a rare meltdown on the largest of stages. The Braves, though less successful in the ring acquisition game, were a constant presence in the NL playoffs, preventing the first Cardinals team to which I paid even moderate attention from making the World Series. And I was taught to hate these teams. And now that I'm older and wiser than I was during my grade school years, I need to confess to two things.

  1. I had no good reason to hate either of these teams.
  2. Even given Confession #1, I have no regrets about hating the Braves and/or Yankees.

Sports rivalries are arbitrary and pointless. That's what is fun about them. These are not warring factions: There is no blood being spilled, and even in the rare instance of unruly violence, the repudiation of it is swift and universal.

What was there to hate about Greg Maddux? A pitcher with the physical gifts of a good MLB starter who became a transcendent MLB starter with his intelligence and killer instinct? Or Derek Jeter? Before #RE2PECT came and ruined baseball (citation needed) in the last several weeks, what was the argument against a fan-friendly star who consistently carried himself in a professional manner? There wasn't one. But it's more fun when you can internally rationalize that a game is a battle between good and evil. It's totally illogical but that's what team sports are built upon. I will be rooting for the Cardinals tonight against the San Francisco Giants but if the players on the two teams committed an egregious violation of the MLB trade deadline and flip-flopped personnel before the game...I'd still be rooting for the Cardinals. It just so happens that instead of rooting for Yadier Molina, Matt Carpenter, and Adam Wainwright, I would be rooting for Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, and Madison Bumgarner. It's fandom. It's stupid, but it's what we do.

Anyway, the Braves and Yankees nevertheless earned my scorn through no actual fault of their own. Sure, once John Rocker and Roger Clemens came into the fold, I didn't care much for them, but my hatred of the teams was already established by then. I hated them because they won. I hated them because I envied their success. And now, with the Cardinals in as enviable of a position as any team in baseball, people hate us. And for the most part, I love it. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I wish the Rams could be good enough that people actually bothered to hate them.

However.

This is a legitimate reason to hate us. So is this. And when these stories were first being published, the largest response that some fans could elicit was "It's Deadspin."

Deadspin.com has become quite notorious in recent years for outspoken editorial stances against the Cardinals (ironic, of course, since it was founded by a devoted Cardinals fan, but more on that in a bit). But this doesn't make news stories that they are posting any less valid. The first link includes an embedded video which corroborates the included text--there is no bias here. When I read the story, I felt like I was going to throw up--this wasn't Sign Guy's endless devotion to cheesiness nor Drew Magary's careful evisceration of the Cardinals. Those things have perverse entertainment value. This was a peek into a hateful underbelly of St. Louis Cardinals fandom that fans want to deny exists so badly that "It's Deadspin" can act as some kind of justification. And while I agree that capping off a serious and absolutely fair exposé with "Go Dodgers" is questionable, it doesn't diminish the uncomfortable reality that it represents.

Now, unlike myself, Deadspin founder Will Leitch, by his own admission, is uncomfortable with the Cardinals being villains. I find being to a new generation of fans what the late-90s Braves/Yankees were to me to be amusing, but that's a matter of personal preference, I suppose. And Mr. Leitch doesn't appear to have much use for Cardinals hatepieces such as the previously referenced one written by Drew Magary (whose work, in full disclosure, I greatly enjoy most of the time, though I found this particular Cardinals piece somewhat boring). But when the revelations about the tense, racially-charged scene outside of Busch Stadium start to flow in, it was not the time to ignore Deadspin. Silence is compliance and this was not the scene to tolerate.


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Predictably, the Cardinals haven't made any comment on the video. And realistically, I didn't expect them to do so. The Cardinals have a (hashtag)brand that they want to keep as milquetoast as they possibly can; this hardly makes them unique among multi-million dollar corporations, much less professional sports teams. But while the Cardinals organization hasn't made a comment, Cardinals fans can, have, and should continue to do so. Consider this mine, I suppose.

I don't want to associate Busch Stadium, nor the Cardinals, nor the Greater St. Louis area (after all, once the Cardinals season ends, I will continue to live and function here) with what is in that video. But at the moment, that's what most of the country is doing. Are people more inclined to point it out because they're sick of seeing the Cardinals in the playoffs? Perhaps. But that doesn't justify boorish, unconscionable behavior in even the slightest way. My response isn't "most Cardinals fans don't reply to peaceful protests with violence rhetoric and stereotypes based on the color of the skin of the majority of the protesters"--everybody knows this. My response is simply "this is not acceptable behavior."

But, of course, even if this video hadn't come out, there would still be hatred towards the Cardinals. After all, the Cardinals are playing in their fourth consecutive NLCS (the NLCS came into existence when my father was in grade school and the Cardinals didn't reach their fourth non-consecutive NLCS until he was 40; it is almost impossible to articulate just how fruitful the current era of Cardinals baseball has been). And I truly don't care if outsiders hate the Cardinals. But I want them to hate the Cardinals for all the wrong reasons--because Yadier Molina turns the exciting Kansas City Royals into a nondescript, unappealing product in the World Series; because the Cardinals have too many hard-throwing young arms which lead to too many fascist strikeouts; because the Cardinals just. Won't. Go. Away.

I recognize that Cardinals fans want to be adored, but being hated is reserved for good teams. So how about instead of aspiring for the Cardinals to not be hated, which will only happen if the Cardinals stop making the playoffs, we aspire for opposing fans to have no good reason to hate us? This won't stop them from doing so, but it'll make us enjoy the home team's on-field successes even more.

Go Cardinals.